The Dean and the Management Team

Since September 3, 2012 the daily running of the institute has been entrusted to a Management Team (MT). This is composed of four people, each with his/her own specialty, so that all aspects of the work are well represented. The main lines of the new organisational structure with brief job descriptions can be seen in this organogram.The four members have equal authority, each in his/her field, hoewever, the Dean is the primus inter pares.

The Dean, Menno ten Brink, began his Rabbinic work in December 1993 as part-time rabbi in both the Liberal Jewish Congregation of Amsterdam and the LJG Rotterdam. Simultaneously he worked for 12 years as the first Liberal Jewish Chaplain to the Dutch Armed Forces.

On 1 January 2004 he succeeded Rabbi David Lilienthal as the full-time rabbi of LJG Amsterdam.

He graduated in Dutch Law at the University of Amsterdam in 1984 and was ordained at the Leo Baeck College in London in 1993.

Rabbi Ten Brink has been a member of the Academic Committee since the beginning of the Institute and has a broad national and international network of contacts; an important aspect for the embedding of the Institute in the global (Liberal) Jewish context.

The Head Academic Program is Reinier Munk, professor of History of Modern Philosophy and of Modern Jewish Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam. Earlier he was Goudeket Professor of Modern Jewish Philosophy at the VU and Endowed Professor in the History and Culture of Judaism at Leiden University.

Professor Munk lectures in Jewish Philosophy at our Institute since its inception and has been a member of the Academic Committee since July 2007. He and prof. Irene Zwiep, the chairperson of our Academic Committee, together form a team that ranks among the elite of Dutch experts in the field of Jewish Studies.

The Head Vocational Program (BVV) is Marianne van Praag, Rabbi of LJG The Hague as well as of LJG Gelderland (Dieren) and LJG Flevoland (Almere). Marianne was ordained in 2008 as one in our first class of rabbis and has many years experience of pastoral work.

Rabbi Van Praag is active in several interfaith organizations, and a frequent speaker for various religious, philosophical and social institutions and associations.

In her position in the Management Team she works closely with the same Vocational Committee that has designed and led the Vocational (BVV) program since the start of the Institute: Carolyn Levisson, Ella Oesterman and Joost Levy.

The Executive Director is Francine Püttmann. She is the central person in the daily work, the one who coordinates all activities and is the first point of contact in all that concerns the Management Team.

Francine studied Semitic Languages ​​at the Juda Palache Institute of the University of Amsterdam. This was followed by a postdoctoral year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Subsequently she has worked as a documentalist and photo editor at the NIW, the main Dutch Jewish Weekly, and with a number of projects of the Jewish Historical Museum, including recently the major exhibition about Judaism in the majestic old New Church in Amsterdam. Since 1 January 2012, she has been working as our librarian and is thus already very much a part of the Institute.